


as long as I'm around

by TolkienGirl



Series: Vintage Winchesters: Season 1 Tags [14]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: (but we don't know that yet do we), Azazel's Special Children (Supernatural), Boy King of Hell Sam Winchester, Brotherly Bonding, Episode: s01e14 Nightmare, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, POV Sam Winchester, Winchester Family Feels (Supernatural)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:55:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25530943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: This isn’t one they get over quickly.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & John Winchester & Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Max Miller & Sam Winchester
Series: Vintage Winchesters: Season 1 Tags [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1777720
Comments: 2
Kudos: 31





	as long as I'm around

Sam has to believe that they’re different.

Brushes with law enforcement (with CPS and school psychologists before that) have illustrated in alarming detail just how wild _are_ the Winchester ways. Theirs is a self-contained logic, a straitjacket of need-to-know nightmares. Sam’s childhood reeks of dust, mildew, lighter fluid, old bones, spoilt milk, and above all, blood—

But it isn’t Max’s childhood.

Going back, if he must, he sees highways and dirt roads, nothing bought new and made to last unless it’s a weapon, few books, less freedom.

Still, it’s not a life he wants to end at the point of a knife or the force of a gun.

Take now, for instance. Ear and temple pillowed against his jacket, eyes half-lidded. The headaches are a black memory of a few hours past, whatever violence they waged on him firmly in the rearview.

Pain, yes, but also: _Dean._ Dean’s still worried. Sam’s still looking to him for just that worry, for what Winchester logic pretends not to recognize as love.

This isn’t one they get over quickly. He knows that. He knows it as they pluck a carton of OJ and a packet of snack cakes off the gas-station shelves. He knows it as Dean blazes through a small-town red light, mind already a hundred miles ahead. 

“Seeing straight, Samantha?”

“Yeah. Yeah.” Sam pinches his nose, rubs his forehead anyway. Just making sure that pressure doesn’t yield pain. “I’m good.”

_Good._

(A beat.)

_A little more tequila and a little less demon hunting and we would have had Max’s childhood._

Saying, then, _I trust you. I trust you enough to trust him._

Bowing, for once and always, to Winchester logic.

Never mind that they still don’t know where Dad is. Never mind that Dean hadn’t met that particular declaration with open warmth. Never mind that Dean had looked back at the yawning, hateful house and said,

_All things considered._

Sam doesn’t think long on that. It will only bring the headaches back. Instead, he smiles for his brother, drinks the OJ, eats the granola bar that is, without a doubt, Dean’s idea of a healthy concession. They drive all night. Without even a conversation to outright state it, Sam knows that they both want to get far, far away.

Ear and temple and jacket and window and a little sleep. The road eaten up beneath them.

Max never knew love. Mother in flames, father and everyone else an enemy. The failure of one’s family—of waking in empty rooms, of disappointed hopes—that, Sam can understand, but there was never cruelty. Not in Dad, not in Dean.

The blood sponged away, the spoilt milk mixed into makeshift mac-and-cheese, the windows of rundown places opened up to mingle fresher air with dust.

Brushes with law enforcement, averted, because Dad never wanted them to be taken away. A self-contained logic, yes, but only because their nightmares walk upright by day.

Not Max’s childhood—not Max’s ending.

Sam has to believe that they’re different.


End file.
